STOCKHOLM, Sweden — France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for works characterized by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.

Le Clézio, a 68-year-old with ties to New Mexico, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.

The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clézio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.

"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."

The academy called Le Clézio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Le Clézio made his breakthrough as a novelist with Désert in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."

That novel, which also won Le Clézio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France.

The Swedish Academy said Le Clézio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, War and The Giants."

Speaking to reporters in Paris, Le Clézio said he was honored and described feeling waves of emotion upon hearing the news. "(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he said.

Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied, "Why not?"

Le Clézio said he would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm and was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award — the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.

Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctively European flavor. Since then, 12 Europeans, including Le Clézio and last year's winner, Doris Lessing of Britain, have won the prize.

The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.

Richard Howard, an award-winning poet who has translated many works from French, including a couple of early short stories by Le Clézio, called him "a very gifted and remarkable writer."

Le Clézio has spent much time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life and often traveled, especially to the world's deserts. The academy said he and his Moroccan wife, Jemia, split their time between Albuquerque, Mauritius and Nice.

He has published several dozen books, including novels, essays and children's books. His most famous works are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of Native Americans.

Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940, and at 8, the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950. Le Clézio tells the story of his father in the 2004 L'Africain.

He studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d'études Littéraires in Nice. He went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico's early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983.

Le Clézio has taught at universities in Bangkok; Mexico City; Boston; Austin, Texas; and Albuquerque among other places, the academy said.